The Ultimate China Bookshelf #46: Ma Bo's Blood Red Sunset

A Memoir of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, published in 1995

An irrepressible, pugnacious young man, Ma Bo launched a campaign to convince the authorities to reopen his case. The upshot was a period of official ostracism and personal isolation; how he managed to cope with this while suffering the tortures of unrequited love forms a major portion of this compelling memoir. A huge bestseller in China, this richly detailed record is told with raw narrative power. — Publishers Weekly

The stoicism and black humor of Blood Red Sunset reflect the self-awareness of a people helpless before the gyrations of the state above them. The Communist Party had appropriated the Chinese imperial tradition of a lofty emperor on high and humble citizens below. — Ross Terrill, Los Angeles Times

Now, suddenly, a book like Blood-Red Sunset has burst upon the scene, written in a journalistic style (much of it is historical fact), with no stream-of-consciousness, no flashbacks, no magic or mysticism; it is simple, straight narrative, with so few signs of technical sophistication that the writing sometimes appears rough around the edges. That a book like this could set the nation on fire and spark such spectacular reactions is quite amazing. — Liu Binyan, New York Times

A sensationalist autobiographical account by a former Red Guard of his exile and victimization in Inner Mongolia during the last years of the Cultural Revolution. —Kirkus

Author Bio:

Born in 1947 Ma Bo, aka “Old Ghost (老鬼 Lǎo Guǐ)”, has lived most of his life in Beijing. Ma graduated from Beijing University with a degree in journalism. He was condemned as a counterrevolutionary in 1970 for defaming Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing. He wrote Blood Red Sunset in 1988 (published later in 1995), which sold over 400,000 copies in China and a further 15,000 on its first printing in English. Openly supporting the protestors in Tiananmen Square in 1989 he was forced to flee China, first to France, and then to the U.S. There he became a resident scholar at Brown University. Ma returned to China in 1995 to care for his sick mother and has remained in Beijing since then.